gritter

version 1.0.0
Robin Brouwer
Daniël Zwijnenburg
45north

This Ruby on Rails gem allows you to easily add Growl-like notifications to your application using a jQuery plugin called 'gritter'.

Note

This is a Rails 3.1 gem. Are you using Rails 3.0 or lower? Check out the 'old' branch on Github. Want support for IE6? Also check out that branch, because the newer version of gritter inside this gem dropped support for it.

Installation

You can use this gem by putting the following inside your Gemfile:

gem "gritter", "1.0.0"

Now generate the locale for gritter:

rails g gritter:locale

Add the following to /app/assets/javascripts/application.js:

//= require gritter

And the following to /app/assets/stylesheets/application.css:

*= require gritter

And that's it!

Changes

Version 1.0.0 changes (17/11/2011):

- Gritter now only works in Rails 3.1. You should check out the 'old' branch for other Rails versions.
- Removed everything that isn't needed for Rails 3.1.
- Added new version for the gritter jQuery plugin (1.7.1).
- Added position option for your gritter messages.
- Locale isn't automatically generated. You need to use the gritter:locale generator.
- Adding locale-based gflash messages got a bit easier.
- You can now use a :gflash option inside the redirect_to method.
- Using SCSS image_path instead of ERB image_path inside the CSS.
- Added CSS3 support for gritter.
- Refactored some parts of the gem.
- Changed the README quite a bit.

Usage

There are several helpers you can use with gritter. All of them print out Javascript code without script-tags.

add_gritter
remove_gritter
extend_gritter

To add the script-tags we added another function called js. It allows you to easily add script-tags around your javascript. It can be used in combination with gritter, but also other Javascript you want to run.

The most popular feature of this gem is gflash. This replaces the regular flash messages in Rails and automatically puts these in gritter boxes. Read further to learn more about gflash.

add_gritter

The add_gritter helper allows you to add a gritter notification to your application. It outputs Javascript directly into your template. It works like this inside a js.erb file:

<%= add_gritter("This is a notification just for you!") %>

The add_gritter helper allows you to easily set the text for the notification. When you want to change the title, just pass the :title argument to the helper:

<%= add_gritter("This is a notification just for you!", :title => "Please pay attention!") %>

There are many more arguments you can pass to the helper:

:title => "This is a title"            # => Allows you to set the title for the notification.
:image => "/images/rails.png"          # => Allows you to add an image to the notification.
:sticky => true                        # => Allows you to make the notification sticky.
:time => 4000                          # => Allows you to set the time when the notification disappears (in ms).
:class_name => "gritter"               # => Allows you to set a different classname.
:before_open => "alert('Opening!');"   # => Execute javascript before opening.
:after_open => "alert('Opened!');"     # => Execute javascript after opening.
:before_close => "alert('Closing!');"  # => Execute javascript before closing.
:after_close => "alert('Closed!');"    # => Execute javascript after closing.

The :image argument also allows you to easily set five different images:

:success
:warning
:notice
:error
:progress

It works like this in combination with flash[:notice] and the js helper:

<%= js add_gritter(flash[:notice], :image => :notice, :title => "Pay attention!", :sticky => true) %>

The js helper is almost the same as the javascript_tag helper. The difference is that you can pass several scripts at once. You don't need to pass these scripts as an Array. The helper also adds a linebreak (\n) after each script.

<%= js add_gritter("See my notification"), add_gritter("Another one") %>

It puts all the scripts inside a single script-tag.

And that's it! You just added Growl-like notifications to your Rails application. It's great for all kinds of notifications, including the flash notifications you want to show to your users.

remove_gritter

The remove_gritter helper removes all gritter notifications from the screen. You can use it inside a js.erb file:

<%= remove_gritter %>

You can pass two extra arguments to this helper.

:before_close => "alert('Closing!');"  # => Execute javascript before closing.
:after_close => "alert('Closed!');"    # => Execute javascript after closing.

You can also use the js helper to add script-tags around this helper.

extend_gritter

The extend_gritter helper allows you to set the default gritter options.

<%= extend_gritter :time => 1000 %>

These are the options you can pass to extend_gritter:

:fade_in_speed => "medium"            # => Allows you to set the fade-in-speed. Can be String or Integer (in ms).
:fade_out_speed => 1000               # => Allows you to set the fade-out-speed. Can be String or Integer (in ms).
:time => 8000                         # => Allows you to set the time the notification stays. Must be an Integer (in ms).
:position => :bottom_left             # => Allows you to set the position for all gritter messages.

The :fade_in_speed and :fade_out_speed options accept the following Strings:

"slow"
"medium"
"fast"

The :position option accepts four different Symbols:

:top_left
:top_right      # Default
:bottom_left
:bottom_right

You can also use the js helper to add script-tags around this helper.

gflash

The gflash helper is a different kind of flash[:notice] message. It uses the add_gritter helper and the default images used in this plugin. It uses a session to remember the flash messages. Add the following inside your controller action:

def create
  gflash :success => "The product has been created successfully!"
end

Now you can add the following to your layout view inside the body-tag:

<%= gflash %>

The flash-message will be shown with 'success.png' as the image and 'Success' as the title. To change the title you can add the following to the gflash helper inside the layout:

<%= gflash :success => "It has been successful!" %>

Now the default title will be overwritten. You can also use gflash inside js.erb files:

<%= gflash :js => true %>

The :success key isn't the only option supported by gflash. You can use the following gflash options:

:success
:warning
:notice
:error
:progress

Each uses the corresponding image and title. You can also add multiple gritter notifications at once:

def create
  gflash :success => "The product has been created successfully!", :notice => "This product doesn't have a category."
end

Besides passing the exact text inside the controller, gflash also supports locales (both for messages and titles). When you start your server a new locale file will be added to /config/locales called gflash.en.yml. Here you can set the locales for all your gflash messages and the titles. It works like this:

en:
  gflash:
    titles:
      notice: "Custom notice title"
      success: "Success"
      warning: "Warning"
      error: "Error"
      progress: "Progress"
    products: # => Controller name
      create: # => Action name
        notice: "Custom notice message"

Now you can do the following inside your Controller:

def create
  gflash :notice => true
end

The locales for the :notice title and message will now be used. You can still pass a String to override a locale. Since gritter version 1.0 you can also do the following to add the gritter messages:

def create
  gflash :notice, :success, :error
end

No need to pass true to each key.

You can change the default time, sticky and class_name options for each gritter message. This is done inside the Controller and works like this:

gflash :success => { :time => 2000, :class_name => "my_class", :sticky => true }
gflash :success => { :value => true, :time => 2000, :class_name => "my_class", :sticky => true }
gflash :error => { :value => "Custom error", :time => 3000, :class_name => "my_error_class", :sticky => false }

When you don't pass a :value it uses the locale. Same goes for when you pass true to :value.

You can also use gflash directly inside the redirect_to method.

def create
  redirect_to @post, :gflash => [:notice, :success]
end

def destroy
  redirect_to :posts, :gflash => { :warning => "You just deleted something important." }
end

def logged_in?
  redirect_to :login, :gflash => { :error => { :value => "You are not logged in!", :sticky => true } }
end

And that's how you add gflash to your Rails application!

Special Thanks

We'd like to express our gratitude to the following people:

Many thanks to Jordan Boesch, creator of the AWESOME jQuery plugin gritter. http://boedesign.com/blog/2009/07/11/growl-for-jquery-gritter/

Also special thanks to Liam McKay for creating the awesome icons! http://wefunction.com/2008/07/function-free-icon-set/